Specialist short course

Join our free online course to learn about the basics of social protection and its implementation around the world.

Effective social protection systems are vital to help those living in poverty to cope with crises and shocks, find employment, and live healthier and fulfilling lives.

Through this short online course, you’ll learn the basics of social protection – what it is and how it works. You’ll explore key concepts and definitions, regional differences and core issues in building social protection systems.

The course was developed by the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies with support from Irish Aid.

Course aims Facilitators Who is it for How you’ll learn Outcomes

Join our free online course to learn about the basics of social protection and its implementation around the world.

Effective social protection systems are vital to help those living in poverty to cope with crises and shocks, find employment, and live healthier and fulfilling lives.

The course was developed by the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies with support from Irish Aid.

This course will provide you with a foundational understanding of social protection and an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and reflect on your own practice.

Course aims

This course will provide you with a foundational understanding of social protection and an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and reflect on your own practice.

Who should attend?

The course is suitable for policymakers, practitioners, researchers and project managers who have an interest in social protection or are working in social protection and who wish to build their knowledge of social protection and its implementation around the world.

This course is also advised as a pre-course for the online programme offered by the inter-agency initiative: TRANSFORM – Leadership and Transformation Curriculum on Building and Managing Social Protection Floors.

How you'll learn

The course is delivered online and divided into a series of modules. In each module, you’ll learn through a mixture of video lectures, slides and quizzes. You’ll be given additional resources (such as readings and audio visual materials on third-party websites) to help you to deepen your learning further.

The course is self-directed and self-paced. This means that you can go through the course and its modules at your own pace, engage at a time that is convenient for you, and work through its content for as long as you like each time you log in. Completing the course is expected to take between four and six hours.

The modules in this course are sequenced so that they direct you on a logical journey through the basics of social protection. Modules include

Module 1: History, definitions and approaches
Module 2: Policy instruments
Module 3: Regional approaches
Module 4: Future of social protection

When you pass the final assessment, you will be awarded with a certificate of completion.

Learning outcomes

After completing this course, you will be able to:

understand the concepts and definitions of social protection
understand the remit of social protection policies and programmes
have insight into the differences of how social protection is being implemented across the world
reflect on the future of social protection.

Entry requirements

Course fees

How to enrol

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